


someone to come home to

by towine (blacktreecle)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, cats and associated shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 19:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktreecle/pseuds/towine
Summary: She’s grown since he first got her, but she’s still small enough to curl up and fit into the space between his neck and shoulder. She feels like a soft, rumbling pillow. The cold wet of her nose tickles Roy’s jaw and her paws knead into the duvet in slow, lazy movements.Suddenly, the room feels a lot less empty, less dark. The ache in Roy’s chest dulls for just a moment.(Roy adopts one of Al's stray kittens.)





	someone to come home to

**Author's Note:**

> SO, for this fic i basically plucked the fullmetal vs flame episode from the 03 anime and stuck it into where it would fit in the manga chronologically, which was around the time they were investigating dr. marcoh. in it, ed wagered that if he won, roy had to tell him about dr. marcoh and take in a stray cat alphonse found. ed Did win but thought making roy keep the cat would be too much to ask after the info he shared, BUT roy with a cat was just too cute for me to leave alone, hence this fic c:
> 
> i've fudged the timeline quite a bit in this way--riza actually got black hayate during the same episode but to make things easier, i made her already have him in this fic--BUT ANYWAY. hopefully it isn't as confusing/strange as i make it all sound. enjoy!

He names her Lyla.

Roy can feel the soft rumble of her purr as he scratches beneath her chin. She’s tiny enough to be carried in one hand. He’s never owned a pet before, what with animals being banned from Madame Christmas’ bar when he was a young boy and completely out of the question during his time in the military academy. And after Ishval, it was difficult enough for Roy to take care of himself let alone another living being.

Lyla meows, a small and squeaky sound, and blinks up at him.

A promise is a promise, and Fullmetal won fair and square. Roy concedes loss when it happens, however desperately he tries to prevent it from happening in the first place. But it was his mistake to freeze right when he had Edward on the ropes, his mind suddenly unable to make the distinction between past and present, red eyes and gold ones.

The image is still vivid, burned into the backs of Roy’s eyelids, enough to make him pause and take in a slow, deep breath.

Lyla nudges her head against his palm, meowing in question at the sudden lack of petting. Roy murmurs an apology and returns to scratching behind her ear, and Lyla leans into the touch.

He finally reaches the door to his office, empty now that it’s after hours and all of his team have gone home after the fight with Fullmetal and the cleanup that followed.

Well, all but one.

“Lieutenant,” he says from the doorframe.

Hawkeye looks up from her desk where she’s been sorting reports in order of urgency—prepping more paperwork for him to deal with tomorrow. “Sir?” She raises an eyebrow when she sees Lyla in his hand.

“Considering your experience with Black Hayate, may I ask if you have any recommendations for pet shops in the area?”

Hawkeye gives him a contemplative pause, but in the end doesn’t ask. This is why Roy adores her.

“Of course, sir,” she says. “I can show you the one I frequent after I’ve finished sorting through this paperwork, I’m almost—”

“Ah,” Roy cuts her off, “no need, that can wait until tomorrow, lieutenant.”

Hawkeye gives him an exasperated look which, though not exactly _good_ , is a far cry from the threatening glare she usually gives him when he tries to postpone paperwork. He suspects it’s the kitten; not even Hawkeye can resist its cuteness.

“Permission to speak freely?” she says wryly, plucking her coat from the back of her chair. She follows Roy out of the office and into the hallway.

“Of course.”

“Owning a pet does not exempt you from your other responsibilities, sir.”

Roy smiles at her. “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing, lieutenant.”

The owner of the pet shop Hawkeye recommends throws in a free cat toy with Roy’s purchases for simply being a friend of one of their regulars. Hawkeye even helps Roy carry it all to his apartment, and Roy begins to wonder if Lyla is actually some kind of good luck charm or a mystical being with the power to make people around her more generous.

Then Hawkeye pulls out a stack of reports from her bag and hands it to him with a pointed look, and Roy realizes he should have known better.

“Have a good evening, sir,” she tells him, giving Lyla one last scratch on the head. “Those had better be done by tomorrow.”

“Right,” he says, grimacing. He closes the door to his apartment after she leaves, then sighs, sinking into his armchair and dropping the thick stack of papers onto the coffee table. Might as well get started.

Lyla climbs into his lap halfway through the first report, mewling. She bats at the corner of a page as he reads.

“Hey now,” he chides, “I’m busy.” He pets her anyway.

He glances at the report again. It’s one of Edward’s. Every time he has to squint his way through reading Edward’s near illegible scrawl brings him that much closer to the necessity of glasses, an uncomfortable thought.

Lyla meows again, scratching at his sleeve with tiny claws. Roy nearly melts. The mystical being thing starts sounding plausible again, but then he thinks it may just be the power of cats in general.

As he smooths his hand over Lyla’s fur, he notices the color of her eyes. Deep amber, almost gold. Not unlike Edward’s. Even her fur is yellow, though she has stripes of black along her spine.

Roy thinks about how Edward would react to being compared to a kitten, and he smirks a little to himself. He expects the Elric brothers won’t be around in East City again for a while, their search always pushing them further out to the edges of the map. Lyla will have grown considerably by the time he sees them again, and maybe they will have, too.

He drifts his finger over a scribble in the left margin of the report, a rather crude drawing of himself, his hair colored in dark spikes.

Lyla meows.

“Hungry?” Roy asks. He tucks the report under his arm and scoops her into his hands before heading into the kitchen.  
  


* * *

  
When Roy returns to East City the day after Hughes’ funeral, his first stop is Havoc’s apartment.

When the door opens, Lyla runs to him, meowing and weaving between his legs.

“I missed you, too,” Roy says, bending down to gather her into his arms. She purrs contentedly under his hand.

“She was real behaved, sir,” Havoc says, scratching the back of his head. “Needy like hell, though.”

“Thank you for watching her,” Roy says.

Havoc shrugs. Then his face turns serious, somber. “Hey, uh. I’m sorry about… Well… I’m sorry.”

Roy keeps his gaze lowered for a moment, watching Lyla nip at his finger. He nods once, sighs. “Yeah.”

“If you need anything, just. You know.” Havoc makes a vague gesture, his expression awkward, but Roy recognizes and appreciates Havoc’s sincerity.

“Thank you, lieutenant.”

“Take it easy, colonel.”

Roy carries Lyla and her bag of belongings back with him to his cold and shadowed apartment. He lowers Lyla to the ground and she stretches, quickly makes her way to her favorite cushion on the couch.

He toes off his boots, hangs his coat onto one of the hooks by the door, and stumbles into his bedroom so he can flop heavily onto his bed. He wants to sink into the pillows and never get up. He thinks about the paperwork waiting for him at headquarters, the packing he’ll have to do for his upcoming transfer to Central. Most of all, he thinks about the vast, gaping hole inside of him that hasn’t stopped aching since the night he shouted for Hughes over the phone line and got nothing but static in return. He considers the very enticing bottle of whiskey sitting in his kitchen cabinet but then realizes it would take more energy than he’s willing to exert to go and retrieve it. Staring at the shadows on the ceiling of his bedroom will have to suffice.

He hears the soft sound of Lyla padding into the room and the even softer sound of her meow.

“Sorry, girl, I’m pretty tired,” Roy says to her without moving his head, staring exhaustedly at the ceiling.

The mattress dips just slightly beside him and Lyla appears in his vision. She tilts her head, ears twitching.

Roy tries to give her a smile, for all that it means to a cat. “Need something? You hungry?”

Lyla nudges Roy’s cheek with her head.

“Oh.” Roy reaches up to rub his hand over her back.

She’s grown since he first got her, but she’s still small enough to curl up and fit into the space between his neck and shoulder. She feels like a soft, rumbling pillow. The cold wet of her nose tickles Roy’s jaw and her paws knead into the duvet in slow, lazy movements.

Suddenly, the room feels a lot less empty, less dark. The ache in Roy’s chest dulls for just a moment.

He exhales, tries to ignore the shakiness of his breath, and sniffs. He turns his face closer to Lyla, feels her shift closer to him in return.

“Thanks,” he says before he can feel foolish about it, and Lyla purrs a lullaby in his ear.  
  


* * *

  
The next time the Elrics drop by Central, Edward catches Roy just after charring the would-be corpse of Maria Ross. Edward hauls him in with two unrelenting fistfuls of Roy’s collar, and Roy tries his damnedest not to let a single blistering word from Edward’s mouth break his carefully constructed exterior. In a way, Edward’s honest reaction is a boon, gives their ruse that much more believability. But it doesn’t change the fact that deceiving him leaves a bitter taste in Roy’s mouth.

That night, when Lyla clambers onto his lap while Roy nurses a glass of something strong and ice cold at the kitchen table, he runs a hand over her fur and tries not to think of Edward when he looks into her golden eyes.

Then after Edward has been whisked away to the east by Major Armstrong, Roy and his unit go homunculi fishing, the results of which are brutal, finger-sized stab wounds in his abdomen and Havoc nearly getting his spine severed in two.

It’s a stressful week, to say the least. It’s just his damn life, Roy supposes, hissing when his still-healing wound acts up again when he reaches for a dish in one of the overhead cabinets of his kitchen. Hawkeye had warned him that he wasn’t ready to leave the hospital, but he’s tired of sitting around waiting.

Lyla’s presence has been soothing through it all. The precious thing, probably doesn’t realize the incredible amounts of stress and danger Roy endures on a daily basis. Or perhaps she does, in her own strange, inexplicable way. It’s as if she knows when Roy needs an extra nudge against his leg or the touch of a paw on his wrist.

“What would I do without you?” he murmurs, scratching beneath Lyla’s chin as she purrs on.

Then Edward returns, eyes and hair still so blindingly bright. He makes a stir in the city, even more than he usually does, something about the people’s alchemist generously aiding those in need and fixing what is broken. When Hawkeye pulls up to the curb beside the two brothers and Roy rolls down the backseat window to fix Edward with a questioning stare, Edward stares right back, unflinching. Not that he hasn’t always done the same before, but this time, _this time_ , something loosens when Edward looks at him. The last time they saw one another Edward wanted to kill him. Now, the irritation on Edward’s face gives way to something warmer, something almost like forgiveness.

Roy’s never thought himself deserving of such a thing, but his shoulders relax all the same.

“Have a good trip to the east?” he asks, as nonchalantly as he can make it.

Fullmetal leans in through the open window, eyes gleaming, the barest curl of a smile on his mouth.  
  


* * *

  
“Sorry about the mess, I’ve been busy with our current state of political affairs being—well.”

“I totally understand,” Alphonse says with a smile, no armor muffling his voice, no clanking metal with his steps.

Lyla rubs herself against Alphonse’s hand, and Alphonse’s face brightens and looks so delighted Roy has half a mind to just let him have Lyla, if Roy wasn’t already so attached to her himself and if Alphonse wasn’t already planning to spend years travelling in a foreign country.

“Thank you for taking care of her all this time,” Alphonse says, fingers scratching over Lyla’s striped fur. “She’s grown so much since then.”

“I should thank _you_ , really.” Roy crouches down beside Alphonse, and when he reaches a hand out for Lyla she comes and meets him, purring. “She was a comforting, grounding presence when everything else felt like it was spinning out of my control.”

“I’m glad.”

Roy turns to look at Alphonse.

Alphonse smiles. “Brother worried it was too much, asking you to take care of her. You gave us the information you wagered for the fight, anyway, and you know how Ed is about equivalency. But if she makes you happy, then I’m really, really glad.”

Roy quirks a smile, just a tad wry. “Worried about me, huh?”

“ _Come_ _on_. Despite everything, you know he is.” Alphonse reaches for one of Lyla’s toys, the one that looks like a fishing rod with feathers tied at the end of the string. Lyla dives for it immediately when he gives it a shake and he laughs. “You should write him, you know. While he’s travelling. I’m sure he’ll write you too, so you’ll have an address to send to.”

Part of Roy doubts it. Through all these years they’ve known each other, he can’t recall a single time they’ve spoken to one another in a context that wasn’t necessitated by work or life-threatening, sinister alchemical machinations. He hasn’t seen Edward since the Promised Day and he’s certainly not here now, just before he and his brother embark on another journey, albeit two separate ones. He’s pleasantly surprised Alphonse thought to pay him a visit before leaving, and the more cynical side of him isn’t surprised that Edward didn’t.

“Brother’s not so good at goodbyes,” Alphonse explains softly, like he can hear Roy’s thoughts without them being voiced. “You’ll see him again. And he’ll write, I’m sure.”

Lyla paws at Roy’s sleeve, gold eyes blinking.

“Then I look forward to it,” Roy says.

Alphonse leaves after saying something about visiting Gracia and Elicia, but not before he extracts a promise from Roy to send pictures of Lyla along with the occasional letter. Roy promises because there’s little anyone can do when faced with a determined Alphonse Elric, and Lyla meows a goodbye while Roy closes the door after him.

And life goes on.

Roy doesn’t hear from either of the Elrics during the next few months and Amestris learns to move on without Elrics running around changing lives, making the impossible possible, and causing other such phenomena. It’s quiet is what it is—which isn’t a problem, really, when Roy has so much on his plate to deal with, but at least the Elrics gave him a reason to get out of his office every once in a while, to take care of whatever trouble they’ve gotten themselves into this time.

“You miss them,” Hawkeye says succinctly, during one of their play dates for Black Hayate and Lyla. Mostly Black Hayate rolls in the grass of Roy’s backyard and freezes hilariously whenever Lyla licks him on the nose.

“Always to the point, aren’t you?” Roy grumbles, takes a swallow from the cold beer bottle in his hand.

“I thought that was why you kept me around.”

The corner of Riza’s mouth lifts in a smile. Her hair is cropped short again—Roy can see the red studs of her earrings glinting in the sunlight, and she is beautiful. People have asked Roy many times, and occasionally still do, what exactly the nature of their relationship is, because people tend to make romantic assumptions. Roy still thinks it’s an absurd question, it being against regulations, besides. Riza knows him, they know each other, and it’s never been like that between them. Sometimes there is a love that doesn’t need explanation.

Most of all, it isn’t anyone’s damn business.

Not to mention it’s less Riza’s pale yellow hair that Roy is interested than something a little darker—a deep, burnished gold. Not that he’s told _anyone_ that particular secret, though he suspects Riza knows anyway because she knows everything before Roy even gets the idea in his head. And this is probably a very, very bad idea.

“Any word from them yet?” Riza asks.

“Nothing,” Roy says, and isn’t sure if he succeeds at keeping the disappointment from reaching his voice.

Riza’s elbow bumps his arm. “Surely we haven’t seen the last of those boys. The world would stop turning without them.”

Roy smiles behind the lip of his bottle.

Later, Riza waves goodbye with Black Hayate’s leash in her hand, walking back to her own home. Lyla meows from where she’s cradled in Roy’s arms and Roy scratches behind her ear just as she likes.

But before he can step back inside, she wriggles in his arms, as if trying to escape. “Hey,” Roy warns, but he loses his grip on her. Lyla lands deftly on her feet, running down the path from the front door. “Lyla!”

Chasing his cat through the neighborhood is not at all something Roy looks forward to doing, but fortunately Lyla stops right at the fence on the edge of his lawn. She meows at him.

“What is it?”

Lyla scratches at the post for the mailbox, meowing all the while.

“Mail? Is that it?”

Roy opens the mailbox.

Inside is a letter.

Roy pulls it out of the mailbox slowly, eyes widening. It’s worn and tattered and the writing scribbled on the front has faded considerably, but he’d know that familiar scrawl anywhere. The clang of the mailbox shutting sounds distant in his ears, and he barely registers walking back inside with Lyla padding next to him.

He sinks into the couch, still just holding the letter in his hands. Then carefully, he slides a fingernail beneath the envelope’s seal. Lyla crawls into his lap like she always does, making herself comfortable.

Roy reads.

And it’s only after he’s read through Ed’s letter a second time that he realizes he’s smiling.  
  


* * *

  
“I wasn’t sure you’d actually keep her.”

“So little faith in me.”

“Oh come on, I’ve seen how lazy you are with paperwork, you can’t blame me for worrying about how well you’d take care of an animal.”

“A promise is a promise,” Roy says simply and hands Ed a mug of coffee.

Ed takes it, his hands curling around the warm ceramic. Roy can see a few fresh scars on the now not-so-newly restored skin of Ed’s right hand, and it figures that Edward Elric would still find trouble for himself even after the homunculi and nationwide plots have ended.

Lyla’s always loved attention, but the way she cuddles up to Ed and repeatedly meows at him to pet her is rather unforeseen and terribly adorable.

“Cats usually hate me,” Ed mumbles, rubbing his knuckles against Lyla’s cheeks. “Dogs _love_ me, in a horrible way that means they love smothering me every chance they get. Cats always hated me after they saw me chew out Al for picking up another stray.”

“Except her.”

“Yeah.” Ed smiles a little when he scratches beneath Lyla’s chin. “She’s alright.”

It’s a little surreal, Ed being here now in Roy’s home. The years have aged him well. Daylight filters in through the curtains hanging in Roy’s living room, and Ed has a way of making light bend in the most beautiful ways around him. Somewhere in Roy’s study is a box full of Ed’s letters over the years of his travels, carefully bound together and reread frequently, fondly.

_I’ve missed you_ , Roy wants to say. _I’m glad you’re here_.

“Tell me about the trip home,” he says, because it was a month between the last letter he received and Ed being here now. “Over lunch, if you’d like.”

“Fuck yes, please, I’m starving.”

Roy rolls up his sleeves and heads toward the kitchen, Ed following with a curious Lyla at his heels. It’s almost too much for Roy’s heart to handle, doing something as domestic as cooking together, but he won’t protest it if Ed won’t. He sincerely hopes Ed won’t.

“So, the trip home. _Man_ , where do I start.” Ed exhales loudly. “You’d think if I made the trip once before, it’d be easier on the way back but _no_ , it was like every force of nature was trying to keep me from getting back here.”

Roy, enamored, listens.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!


End file.
